This paper contrasts the incentives for cronyism in business, the public sector and politics within an agency problem model with moral hazard. The analysis is focused on the institutional differences between private, public and political organizations. In business, when facing a residual...

This paper studies party discipline in a congress within a political agency framework with retrospective voting. Party discipline serves as an incentive device to induce office-motivated congress members to perform in line with the party leadership's objective of controlling both the executive...

This paper analyzes a spatial model of political competition between two policy-motivated parties in hard times of crisis. Hard times are modeled in terms of policy-making costs carried by a newly elected party. The results predict policy divergence in equilibrium. If the ideological preferences...

This paper analyzes endogenous lobbying over a unidimensional policy issue. Individuals differ in policy preferences and decide either to join one of two opposite interest lobbies or not to take part in lobbying activities. Once formed, lobbies make contributions to the incumbent government in...

This paper analyzes provision of a differentiated public good within an organization. A moderate principal assigns a public good production to one of two extreme agents. A contributing agent then gets the opportunity to choose a public good variety he prefers but has to carry a cost of...

This paper provides a rationale for intra-party democracy within a political agency model with moral hazard. The focus is on the party's internal procedures for policy determination. I show that democratizing those procedures benefits the party leadership, which seeks to maximize joint...